New Mexico’s AG on next steps after beating Meta

Source: New Mexico’s AG on next steps after beating Meta Publisher: POLITICO | Author: By TYLER KATZENBERGER Archived: March 26, 2026

With help from Aaron Mak

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez spent his early days as a prosecutor rooting out sex crimes and child exploitation in the darkest corners of the internet. This week, that experience helped him prevail over Meta after a jury ordered the company to pay $375 million for failing to protect kids from sex predators.

The Democrat’s victory represents a significant moment for kids’ online safety advocates. He’s the first state prosecutor to secure a ruling against a social media giant by making the argument that the platform’s design has harmed kids. This followed a sting operation to uncover child sex criminals on Meta apps that his office dubbed “Operation MetaPhile.”

Torrez’s win came shortly before another verdict against Meta and Google-owned YouTube out of Los Angeles on Wednesday. Both decisions are helping to usher in a new moment of legal and regulatory reckoning for Big Tech.

Now, Torrez told DFD, he has a new mission: harnessing this week’s New Mexico verdict to force Meta to redesign its platforms, whether through a court order or legislation in Congress.

“If I can shut down spaces that enable predation on a large scale, then I have an obligation to do so,” he said during a sit-down interview this week in San Francisco. “When you’ve dealt with child victims, as I have in my career, and you know what that does to them, there’s no excuse for it. There’s nothing I’m going to refrain from doing, in terms of trying to make those spaces safer.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Are you surprised that you made it to this point?

No. We built a case on a theory of liability that people have seen before. Our view is that this was a dangerous product that has been intentionally designed to be addictive. It has been intentionally marketed to young people. While \[Meta\] was well aware of the way in which the features that were built into the product put kids at risk, they weren’t honest with the public.

And so to a certain extent, this parallels a lot of what we have seen in terms of consumer product litigation in the past, most obviously in the auto industry or Big Tobacco. We are just taking an old but very resilient model of litigation and applying it to a new context.

Is this Big Tech’s ‘Big Tobacco’ moment?

I think so. It’s in the nature of not the specific type of harm, because obviously, we’re talking about very different types of potential harms to society, but in the core conduct that we’ve seen from the companies. \[They were\] doing internal research and getting answers that really raised alarm amongst the researchers inside the company. It was elevated to other executives and came with specific recommendations. And when the safety recommendations came into conflict with the analysis done by the user and engagement teams, profit always won. Profit always got the vote from senior executives inside the company, including Mr. \[Mark\] Zuckerberg.

What does this verdict change, politically speaking, about the conversations we’re having around tech giants?

The most important thing, I think, will be the opportunity to seek injunctive relief and actually force the company to change the way its products are designed and marketed inside our state … \[I\]t cracks the door open because if they are forced to do that in New Mexico, well, then they obviously can do that in California, in New York, in France. And then the question becomes, well, if you’re going to do it there, why not do it everywhere?

The second thing I think it does is it really should add to the public’s awareness and to the public’s expectation that Congress finally step up and do something.

Do you think Congress will do something?

I’m not in the business of trying to predict congressional action.

But this is something where I will get broad support from everyone. It seems to me that Congress could use a win in the eyes of the American public, and they probably should start to lean in. There is a lot of consensus, there is a lot of bipartisan work that can be done. I think it would go a long way towards showing the American people that the impact of corporate money and corporate lobbying on D.C. is not going to have the final word.

What’s next for you? Are you going to call up members of Congress?

I intend to be part of that conversation. I will obviously be urging policymakers to look at the judgments that have been rendered by these juries and by their sense of urgency.

Top Wall Street and tech industry economists warned during POLITICO’s Economy Summit on Wednesday that a recession may exacerbate AI-driven job displacement, as companies tend to invest more in automation when the economy craters.

“The one thing that does worry me a little bit more is if we look back historically, adoption tends to accelerate following a negative economic shock that’s unrelated to technology itself,” said Joseph Briggs, a senior global economist at Goldman Sachs.

Peter McCrory, head of economics research at Anthropic, pointed to evidence from the Great Recession suggesting that companies tend to invest more in technology that can perform routine labor tasks during economic downturns. While AI can displace jobs even when there’s not a recession, McCrory said, “If the economy is healthy and unemployment is low, those workers who may experience some displacement will have new opportunities elsewhere in the economy.”

If this historical pattern holds, it could spell trouble for the White House as the labor market sags and voters express concern about AI diminishing job opportunities.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) unveiled legislation on Wednesday that would pause the construction of data centers, POLITICO’s Nico Portuondo and Amelia Davidson report.

The Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act would prohibit construction “until Congress passes comprehensive AI legislation that ensures the safety and prosperity of the American people.” Most Democratic and Republican lawmakers have rebuffed the idea of a moratorium, so the legislation is unlikely to pass in the current Congress. Yet Democratic Party progressives such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) have advocated for such a pause.

“AI has received far too little serious discussion here in our nation’s capital,” Sanders said during a press conference on the bill. “I fear that Congress is totally unprepared for the magnitude of the changes that are already taking place.”

The announcement contrasted starkly with the White House’s move earlier in the day to appoint several AI-bullish Silicon Valley executives to the influential President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. As POLITICO’s Brendan Bordelon reports, the appointments include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. The council is expected to hold sway over the administration’s AI policies.

• A new WhatsApp feature drafts AI-generated texts based on your conversation.
• GPS disruptions are surging across the Middle East.
• OpenAI backs a bot army startup.
• Tech executives sound the alarm on helium shortages caused by the Iran war.
• Colleges look to oral exams to combat AI.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@politico.com*); Bob King (bking@politico.com*); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com*); John Hewitt Jones (jhewittjones@politico.com*).

Follow us on X

• John Hewitt Hones @johnhewittjones
• Aaron Mak @aarontmak